Community participation in TomTom’s proprietary map improvement technology grows 1,000 percent in less than a year.

TomTom reveals that members of the TomTom Map Share community have made a total of five million map updates worldwide. This milestone is the result of the rapid adoption of TomTom’s proprietary technology by the TomTom Map Share community, which has grown from half a million users at the beginning of 2008 to more than five million users today.

TomTom is able to deliver the most up-to-date maps in a changing world by enlisting the help of its users worldwide. Map Share allows TomTom customers to make improvements to their map instantly on their TomTom navigation device. Once verified by TomTom moderators, these updates are made available to the entire Map Share community, ensuring TomTom customers always have access to the most up-to-date maps.

“From the beginning, we envisioned Map Share as a tool to help drivers contend with the frustration of unexpected road changes, and to be used between map updates,” said Corinne Vigreux, managing director, TomTom. “To put this five million milestone in perspective, a one-hour trip made anywhere in Europe or North America will be influenced by twenty to thirty Map Share corrections.

“The success of Map Share is also due to the fact that the improvements made are those that customers really care about, and that the community has taken the time to report and share these corrections.”

The significance of this milestone is also reinforced by comparing the number of Map Share updates with the 15,000 reports received by Tele Atlas per month from users of its online map reporting system, Map Insight.

Map Share facts:

* Hundreds of thousands of street names have been added* Almost one million roads that were incorrectly blocked (or open) are now included or excluded from TomTom routes* Map Share users in the UK, US and Germany make the most improvements